Positive and negative associations underlying ambivalent attitudes

In two studies, we compared the strength of positive and negative associations of ambivalent attitudes to those of nonambivalent attitudes. In Study 1, results from an implicit association task showed that, in contrast to nonambivalent attitudes, ambivalent attitudes were characterized by strong positive and negative associations. In Study 2 responses to ambivalent attitude objects were faster following a positive as well as following a negative prime, compared to a non-word prime, whereas for neutral attitude objects prime type did not influence response times. Results provide direct evidence for the assumption that both positive and negative associations of ambivalent attitudes are relatively strong. Implications for attitude strength and attitude structure are discussed.     

Simple movement imitation: Are kinematic features sufficient to map perceptions into actions?

The aim of this study was to pinpoint the nature of the visual features used in the automatic mapping of perceived movements into similar executed movements, following the direct matching hypothesis. In Experiment 1 subjects imitated the lifting of one of two fingers, presented with different orientations. As predicted, stimuli which were further rotated away from the posture of the executing hand elicited slower reaction times. In Experiment 2, we verified that this orientation effect was not a purely perceptual effect by presenting the same stimuli but asking subjects to respond verbally. No orientation effect was found using a verbal response. In Experiment 3, we replaced the moving fingers by two arbitrary objects moving with the trajectories of the finger tips of Experiment 1. The same orientation effect as in Experiment 1 was observed. We conclude that in this experiment participants are using purely kinematic features to map perceived into executed movements.     

Is banara really a word?

Bowers, Davis, and Hanley (Bowers, J. S., Davis, C. J., & Hanley, D. A. (2005). Interfering neighbours: The impact of novel word learning on the identification of visually similar words. Cognition, 97(3), B45-B54) reported that if participants were trained to type nonwords such as banara, subsequent semantic categorization responses to similar words such as banana were delayed. This was taken as direct experimental support for a process of lexical competition during word recognition. This interpretation assumes that banara has been lexicalized, which predicts that masked form priming for items such as banara-banana should be reduced or eliminated. An experiment is reported showing that the trained novel words produced the same amount of priming as untrained nonwords on both the first and the second day of training, suggesting that the interference observed by Bowers et al was not due to word-on-word competition.     

Production and recognition bias of stylistic sentences using a story reading task

Four experiments examined participants' ability to produce surface characteristics of sentences using an on-line story reading task. Participants read a series of stories in which either all, or the majority of, sentences were written in the same style, or surface form. Twice per story, participants were asked to fill in a blank consistent with the story. For sentences that contained three stylistic regularities, participants imitated either all three characteristics (Experiment 2) or two of the three characteristics (Experiment 1), depending on the proportion of in-style sentences. Participants demonstrated a recognition bias for the read style in an unannounced recognition task. When participants read stories in which the two styles were the dative/double object alternation, participants demonstrated a syntactic priming effect in the cloze task, but no consistent recognition bias in a later recognition test (Experiments 3 and 4).     

Meaningful processing of meaningless stimuli: the influence of perceptual experience on early visual processing of faces

The N170 is an event-related potential component associated with extrastriate visual mechanisms involved in detecting human faces and leading to their characteristic structural encoding. Consequently the N170 discriminates the processing of stimuli providing physiognomic information from the processing of other, similarly complex, visual patterns. We have used this effect to explore the top-down influence of newly acquired experience on the initial visual categorization of physiognomic stimuli. Schematic faces having the inner components mislocated did not elicit an N170 effect in naive participants. However, after normally configured versions of the schematic faces were exposed, suggesting what the ambiguous patterns represented, the same patterns elicited an N170 effect as conspicuous as that elicited by regular schematic faces. This priming effect, which changed the visual processing of distorted faces in extrastriate regions, could not be explained by post-perceptual decisions. Although accounts based on changes in focal attention, or within-vision constraints could not be categorically rejected, this outcome might suggest cognitive penetrability of early visual categorization.     

Meaning Selection and the Subcortex: Evidence of Reduced Lexical Ambiguity Repetition Effects Following Subcortical Lesions

Recent research indicates that individuals with nonthalamic subcortical (NS) lesions can experience difficulties processing lexical ambiguities in a variety of contexts. This study examined how prior processing of a lexical ambiguity influences subsequent meaning activation in 10 individuals with NS lesions and 10 matched healthy controls. Subjects made speeded lexical decisions on related or unrelated targets following homophone primes. Homophones were repeated with different targets biasing the same or different meanings on the second presentation. The effects of prime-target relatedness, interstimulus interval (200 or 1250 ms), and same vs. different meaning repetition were examined. Both the patient and control groups showed priming when the same homophone meaning was biased on repetition. When a different meaning was biased on the second presentation, no priming was evident in the controls, while facilitation remained present for the NS group, consistent with aberrant meaning selection and deactivation processes. These findings are discussed in terms of age and task-related repetition effects and current conceptions of frontal–subcortical involvement in cognition.David Copland is supported by the Australian Research Council     

Color‐specific filtering of rival binocular inputs induced by priming1

Abstract: In a situation where the two eyes separately receive two dissimilar images such as a blue square and a red square, the brain is forced to resolve competitive interpretations of the visual inputs. Earlier studies have indicated that adaptation to one of two rival images can control the following competitive perception. Consistent with those studies, the present experiments revealed that immediately after a brief presentation of a color (priming stimulation) to the two eyes, subjects dominantly perceived the other color out of the chromatic rivalry. This effect showed an interocular transfer even if indirect monocular priming was employed, but the filtering out of a primed color did not occur when an unprimed rival image was removed from the other eye. These facts suggest that binocular feature‐detection processes in the human visual system might be responsible for the priming effect on rival images.     

Memory load as a cognitive antidote to performance decrements in data entry

In two experiments, subjects trained in data entry, typing one 4-digit number at a time. At training, subjects either typed the numbers immediately after they appeared (immediate) or typed the previous number from memory while viewing the next number (delayed). In Experiment 2 stimulus presentation time was limited and either nothing or a space (gap) was inserted between the second and third digits. In both experiments after training, all subjects completed a test with no gap and typed numbers immediately. Training with a memory load improved speed across training blocks (Experiment 1) and eliminated the decline in accuracy across training blocks (Experiment 2), thus serving as a cognitive antidote to performance decrements. An analysis of each keystroke revealed different underlying processes and strategies for the two training conditions, including when encoding took place. Chunking (in which the first and last two digits are treated separately) was more evident in the immediate than in the delayed condition and was exaggerated with a gap, even at test when there was no gap. These results suggest that such two-digit chunking is due to stimulus encoding and motor planning processes as well as memory, and those processes transferred from training to testing.     

Disociaciones entre pruebas implícitas y explícitas de memoria: significado e implicaciones teóricas

Resumen

Las disociaciones entre pruebas implícitas y explícitas de memoria se han convertido últimamente en el fenómeno más rico e ilustrativo teóricamente de que la memoria se manifiesta tanto de una forma directa o explícita como de una forma indirecta o implícita. La distinción entre memoria implícita y explícita ha proporcionado un marco teórico y de trabajo extremadamente fructífero para aumentar nuestro conocimiento sobre la naturaleza y arquitectura de la memoria. En este trabajo se presenta una amplia revisión de las disociaciones entre pruebas implícitas y explícitas de memoria, las múltiples variables que las producen, las distintas poblaciones susceptibles de generarlas y las explicaciones más relevantes sobre su significado. De entre estas explicaciones destacan: 1) la que considera que las disociaciones son el resultado de diferentes procesos y 2) la que entiende que reflejan diferentes sistemas de memoria. Entre los proponentes de ambas explicaciones se ha desarrollado un debate que ha llevado a una nueva concepción de la naturaleza y arquitectura del sistema de memoria que da fundamento a los efectos de priming.